How fkkking James Vega SHOULD Have Happened
by pedrounicorn
Summary: A personal head-canony take on how the Femshep James Vega relationship should have happened.
1. to prison

I feel the relationship between james and shepard has a ton of room for nuance and extreme sexual and romantic tension. So, this the Pedro fic on how the first sexual encounter with james Vega SHOULD have happened.

**WHO ARE WE: **

Anne Caroll "Oakley" (Fem)Shepard, Earthborn, Soldier, Ruthless

Charming, reliable, and a crack shot, our Shepard is a valkyrie incarnate; she is as passionate about killing reapers as she is about bar fights and fraternization.

I have personal headcanon and tweaks to the overall story that I will explain now, for clarity:

Jack wears whatever she wants whenever she wants. She turns looks. She's iconic. She possesses all agency of her body. No prison uniform. Bisexual (which, by the way, is canon, but WHATEVER, IM NOT BITTER). Some face tats.

The Alliance Base Detention Center is a building completely different from what we see in-game. Shepard is not allowed certain privileges, including an omni-tool. She does not wear an Alliance uniform/dress blues in PRISON. Yes, it's still cushy as fuck tho. Bougie.

Aria is still a bad bitch but much more fun and laid back, like 20% more party queen

Have Fun 3

"So, does this remind you of Earth?" Jack asks, chewing on a toothpick with mirth, eyes sparkling at the prospect of so much trouble. Her head is freshly shaved to the scalp, only a mild shadow where glossy brown hair grows in like peach fuzz, save for spots that boast surgical scars and tattoos. She takes a long drag on a cigarette and Shepard sighs, tasting the atmosphere on her tongue like so much chemical plaque.

"Nah," Shepard contends, declining the cigarette when offered and drawing a deep breath with sarcasm. "The air on Omega is cleaner."

Jack chuckles out small puff of smoke and she grins around her exhale, sniffing against her shirtsleeve and following Shepard into the cavernous maw of cramped Omega corridors. Both are in plainclothes, walking with a shoddy familiarity down damp alleyways, the hem of Jack's flair denim just barely out of reach as she teeters confidently on sturdy two inch platforms.

"Seems you ain't so popular here, Oakley," the baldy snickers, jerking a thumb at a nearby tele-news prompter as they back-track, correcting a wrong turn.

Shepard does little more than curl her lip at a subtitled broadcast, abandoning thought of the clusterfuck that had been Bahak while footage of a wailing Batarian family coincides with reports of the destroyed system. "Who _hasn't _comited a little mass genocide these days?" Shepard replies dryly, stepping around a hunching vorcha that convulses on the street with some kind of sickness.

"At least you still have Spectre status," Jack muses, finishing her cigarette with one final puff before extinguishing the butt on her watchface. "And we can get like… one more night out of it before you gotta turn yourself in."

"Yeah, thank God we survived our mission, hey?" Shepard bemones with a breath of irony, squinting down an empty shaft where a few figures scuttle and cough in the dark. Jack laughs out loud, the sound partially drowned out by a first a sharp honk then a human scream a block away from them. "It's under one of these big apartment complexes, like, around back."

"I trust you, there, Calamity Jane," Jack teased, minding the status of her manicure, or lack thereof.

"You know, Dorris Day was from Ohio, too, so."

"Ooh, well, double joke then."

Jack, whom Shepard had playfully nicknamed "Johnny," after a role played by her favorite Earthborn actor with the biotic's namesake, had become her closest friend and confidant in the months preceeding the so-called Suicide Mission. It was Johnny herself who'd suggested one more night of truly free anonymous debauchery before Shepard and her face became the poster child for intergalactic war crimes.

Shepard had agreed without protest.

They came to their destination after a few more minutes of rounding squat apartment buildings, finally arriving at what Shepard had affectionately called 'the local watering hole.'

Too many people at Afterlife knew who she was, in armour anyway, and a few too many batarians worked there for her liking. She'd planned on going to see Aria before her eventual incarceration but now just wasn't the time, given the scheduled debauchery and all that.

The doorway was lit by a small neon sign that seemed to slice one's retanas open, the pair descending a staircase guarded by a single asari covered head to toe in tattoos, many in Earth style pin ups and krogan pigment-scarring. Shepard greeted her with the tip of her hat, pushing the sunglasses up on her nose so they perched as close to her face as possible. This was a pretty human-centered bar for the most part; every time she'd been in here there was scant an alien to be seen save for those working and a few asari patrons. She liked it here. It felt cosy and familiar, Weastern and Oriental Earth memorabilia on the wall, posters depicting samurai and cowboys alike. "Oakley, is this a human bar?" Jack asked, eyeing a small crowd of folks playing poker in the corner and taking a seat.

"Sort of. Not like its exclusive or anything but nearly all the drinks are for carbon-based lifeforms so it does tend to… I guess exclude," Shepard mumbles as she bellies up to the bar, a small rotating fan working double time on the wall above her. She orders two whiskey sours and a tequila shot for each of them. "Well," she sighs, raising a glass to her compatriot.

"To prison," Jack grins wryly, winking.

"Ugh, to prison."

They spend a good part of their night drinking and kiki-ing, long peals of squeals and giggles filling the bar as they hee and haw at one another. It's exactly perfect save for one thing.

"I wanna fuck, John," Shepard hiccups, pushing her sunglasses up and over her forehead. Jack nearly chokes on her drink and snickers. "No, no Seriously!" Shepard protests with a laugh, punching her friend. "I wanna fuuuuhhhck."

"Hey, man, that's a good point. You ain't got a ton a time left, ehh?" Jack agrees, wincing at the burn of liquor ravaging her senses.

"No, man, I f-fucking don't," Shepard hums, breath hitching around the urge to hiccup once again. "What if I'm in prison for-fucking-ever and I never have sex again?"

"Well, you better start getting real good art carving dildos outta toothbrushes or whatever."

Shepard groans.

"I was in intergalactic torture prison, Oak, my perspective doesn't really help."

"Fair."

A long pause.

"What about Garrus?"

"What _about_ Garrus?" Shepard huffs almost immediately, clearly still sore about it as she fingers a bar napkin. "He's…. Going away now so it doesn't matter what about him. As soon as the mission was over he got called back to Palaven like some fucking war hero and here I am set to go to a fucking Earth prison for my forseeable future. Garrus and I are… done"

"Alright, alright, sorry I brought it up," Jack sighs, patting her friend once on her arm. Shepard sucks her teeth as she finishes another drink, pausing to push a lock of dark hair out of her face. "Anyway, I'm sort of over interspecies stuff for a while, I think."

"What! No, don't say that," Jack protests.

"Ok, except Asari."

"That a girl."

"It's just exhausting, ya know? Adjusting to a whole other culture, dialect, social practice, planetary upbringing, _whatever_, and that's only base level stuff - everything after that is like… still just as complicated as being with someone who grew up on the same planet, hell the same _continent_ as you, ya know?"

"You're telling me," Jack chuffs, having switched to beer. "Not when it's just sex though, right?"

Shepard shrugs, "I mean, I guess." She leans back on her stool and peels long coils of hair off the back of her neck into a ponytail. "I dunno, I guess I feel like… _obligated_ to be diplomatic, or something. Like if I'm not a shining beacon of cultural relations I'm not owning up to my, what... status? Legacy? My _ouvre_…"

"_Ouvre,"_ Jack repeats over the lip of her can. She pauses and sips, considering what it is the commander is trying to get at. "I think you should probably cut yourself some slack, considering."

Shepard sighs, "Considering," she agrees with a grumble. Another long sigh. "Whatever," she hisses, closing her eyes and trying not to let rage sweep her away from the good time she'd just been having.

Jack takes notice of the tensity and slaps her friend on the back, finishing her beer with the other hand. "Come on," she insists, rising from her seat and donning shades. "Let's get you laid, hey?"

"Fucking _let's_," Shepard snorts.


	2. hangover

05:00 with a hangover was just exactly particularly the opposite of Commander Anne Caroll Shepard's favourite thing, it turns out. She rises, sweating and stagnant from the exact place she'd fallen face-first onto her bed last night and noticed blood on her pillow. Her head fucking _aches _and is a painful reminder that no, she's actually alive and going to prison, as she feels a stiffness in her neck. Shepard is a marine, though, so being in a place where she must be fully functional after a bender is basically like going home.

She straightens up and sways as her brain tilts back in her skull like a rotten fruit. Jack had curled up beside her in the night and is naked in the sheets, which feels a bit like going home, too.

She hadn't even undressed herself, and unbuttons her pants with a wave of gastrointestinal distress, clutching her forehead as she makes her way to the cabin shower.

The bathing was less like bathing than normal, in the way that most hangover showers are. Cold water, large gulps from the spraying faucet, she loved EDI and the Normandy for it, the filters, the carefully regulated water temperatures.

The rumble of high-speed space noise and Jack's soft breathing are the only sounds as shepard combs her wet hair. She had known for a while now that once The Suicide Mission was over she'd be tried for war crimes and has since been letting it grow.

She dresses herself and dons the same non-conspicuous black jacket from the night prior over her dress blues, grabbing her sunglasses and a baseball cap off her dresser. She kisses a slumbering Jack on the temple, gets onto the transport shuttle, and leaves without a word to anyone aboard.

The ride over is painful and quiet. They haven't sent anyone to escort her, thank god, she's not sure she would be able to keep her cool if they had really assigned her a babysitter. It also gives her a chance to scroll through her omni-tool, which she'll be forced to 'give up' when she goes to prison. Luckily she isn't Jack, who has had her omni tool surgically removed or replaced, twice. She sighs. Thinking about Jack makes her stomach hurt. She opens her private messages and hums to distract herself. Thy are less melodic, though, more like pained groaning through pressed lips.

Garrus has messaged her twice. She closes the window and begins manually destroying documents. Technically she's still a spectre for two more hours, which means record keeping is fuck all at this point, deleting all things shady, personal, etc.

"EDI," she says, feeling more choked up than she meant to.

"Yes, Commander."

"Purge my files, wipe everything. Send encrypted data to Liara where relevant."

"Yes, Commander."

"Thank you, EDI."

"Of course."

The shuttle makes port first at the Citadel so she can get yelled at by a group of incompitent oligarchs, where she is stripped of her Spectre status, denounced by the council, and pretty much chewed out for twenty-odd minutes. When she leaves the 'meeting' she is with a pair of Alliance escorts who will take her to the Seattle Alliance Base Detention Center on Earth, where she will be booked, fingerprinted, photographed, possibly court martialed, discharged, and grounded for the foreseeable future.

The ride to Earth is tense and quiet. The sentry that is not operating the spacecraft sits across from her in the holding cell of the small ship, hands in his lap. The same cold vacuum of space that once lulled her to sleep on the Normandy seemed to wrap around her like the maw of some great beast. She shudders as she remembers death.

The hull is cramped with just the two of them but is still somehow freezing. The craft she's being detained in has its engine and thrusters in the front of the ship, a sleek oblong thing with a trailing hull that gets no warmth from any tutting machinery. She already misses EDI's climate control and the way she'd gently warm the captain's quarters right before Shepard's alarm would go off.

Shepard shoves her hands in her pockets and fingers the fleece, furrowing her brow when she feels a piece of crumpled paper with her fingertips. She unfurls it with both hands and squints. It's a gum wrapper, she scowls at the scribbles and raised it to her face. She snorts when she realizes what it is: a phone number. Shepard rolls her eyes and realizes she must have picked someone up last night despite her soon to be incarceration. 'Old habits,' she thinks, mocking herself. Rotating the paper in one hand, she spots a name scratched into the back in faded black ink.

"Jimmy," she mumbles, her head throbbing.

She fondly recalls her first time passing through the mass relay, then immediately regrets this fondness as she is hurled into deep space without the friendly snickers of a bemused Joker. Another wave of nausea as she thinks of her oldest friend and navigator, Earth coming quickly and suddenly into view through a port side window. "Jesus," she bemoans, holding her head in her hands. She can't tell if it's the hangover or the present situation but she's certain she's going to throw up. She does, and it is just bile, swallowing the small mouthful.

The doors open once they've docked and Shepard is _handcuffed_, escorted past a shrill group of protesters and paparazzi, and onto a secondary ground shuttle. The way the people are screaming at her is so confusing that Shepard blocks it out.

She is hardly even paying attention when she hears a familiar voice and straighten immediately.

"Admiral Anderson, sir."

"At ease, Shepard." The Admiral's face is solemn, almost pained at the sight of her. "Jesus, Shepard you look like shit."

"Thank you, Sir." She bursts with a sputter of laughter. It feels good to see him, especially now.

"Did you get in a fight?"

"I believe so, sir. Come to see me off?" Shepard asks wryly. She goes to touch her face with both hands, as they are handcuffed, and lets them fall into her lap with a clatter.

"Not quite, Commander."

"Sir?"

"You're not being tried, Shepard."

There's a brief pause. The truck they are in rattles.

"Am I going to prison, sir?"

"You'll be placed under private security at the SABDC, stripped of your Omni tool, retain your title, retain instatement in the Alliance, and be grounded for the foreseeable future."

Shepard starts to hiccup and then audibly snorts. "Sir?"

"Grounded."

Another long desert of a pause. The shuttle rumbles and she feels a familiar swimming in her stomach as she adjusts to the Earth's natural gravity.

"So a civilian?"

"You'll continue your enlistment, as I said. You'll be a resident of Earth's Alliance Military for the foreseeable future. You'll have the opportunity to live at the barracks-"

"No thank you, Admiral."

"Or other military-assigned housing in Seattle."

"You don't mean... Augusta?"

In the late 2130's there had been a resurgence of interest in water-only emission systems being built into housing for the Alliance in an effort to make Earth residence more sustainable for enlisted humans holding down the fort at home. Washington aided heavily in the effort. Engineers, Doctors, Scientists, Philosophers, Anthropologists, Etcetera. When the habitations were built they could be passed through families and eventually cycled through to be mostly Alliance educators or families with Alliance relatives. They had an air of leisure and a minimal neat styling about them with long man-made areas of flatness, perfectly irrigated and beautifully landscaped. They resembled neatly spaced holes on a sprawling golf course, each occupying its own level as they made flat shallow cuts into a long sloping hill, surrounded by lush groves of evergreens. Thus the colloquialism,

"Augusta."

Shepard whistles. "Luxury."

"With stipulations."

"And that's it? I can travel and do civilian activities no-holds-barre?"

"Not quite."

"Oh?"  
"Parole checkups."

"How often?"

"Depends."  
"On what?"

"He will explain it."

"He? My officer?"

"He's not just an officer, he is Alliance Navy and one of the top in his rank, following a similar path to yours, matter of fact."

"I got a scrub on my tail?"

"Shepard," he warns.

She scoffs and rolls her eyes "I'm just saying, sir."

"Shepard, you'll be expected to behave," Anderson says firmly.

"Fucking Jason Borne is my personal nanny, like..." he squints at her and she rolls her eyes. "Sir, I will be on my best behavior and be at the command of the Alliance Navy, Sir." The ground shuttle is like a big bus with benches and packed with military gear. It's been so long since she was on Earth the commander can't tell what model EATV she's riding inside of.

Anderson sighs and responds curtly, "You are wise to take this seriously, Commander. This is the first time you'll be publicly outed as a spectre. Everything you've done now falls to the Alliance, not just the council. The Human Race, Shepard. Attitudes will be strained and relationships tested, we cannot afford to be tending to you while dealing with the political fallout."

"Sir, I swear I will be good, Sir."

He sighs. "Shepard, just consider the alternative," Anderson rubs his face with a look of weary bewilderment. "A lot of work went into negotiating these terms with council space. Please respect that your status in the world involves a very complex and fragile web."

Shepard feels a twinge of shame, sighing.

"Apologies, sir."

"No need."

"I'll meet you today for the first time more formally inside, among a few witnesses."

"Thank you, sir."

He nods and the double set of doors shut between them as his ground shuttle pulls off. At the end of the short hallway another set opens with a mechanical heaving sound, Shepard snorts, taking her cue.

"Commander Shep- uhhhhhh... Shepard."

She raised her head to snort and snap at this Bozo who can't even get her name right when another wave of nausea passes through her body. An entire evenings worth of memories suddenly floods her and her face fills with heat. "No fucking way," she laments with a stab of irony, laughing as she looks up to the ceiling.


	3. night out

GOING TO MAKE IT QUITE CLEAR I don't care for the non-privacy for Aria's section of Afterlife I think it's honestly dumb that anybody can see who's going to see her by just like da'huurrrrr looking up at where she is so I'm imagining it almost more like a backdoor situation that leads up into a balcony that overlooks the club. Like she has a private suite that can be accessed secretly if you know the right channels and the Balcony Queen Goddess Pirate Colloseum Julius Ceasar Thumbs Down Realness of it all comes as almost like a perk. Anyway will explain to follow BUT i wanted to just make that note before i start describing an area that doesn't exist in-game in a way that might be confusing ok here we go

Jack and Shepard slog their way out of the bar with no regard for grace, one arm supporting the other in an amorphous Jack-Shepard four legged beast, snickering and lighting cigarettes as they feel an air of mischief overtake them.

"I want to see Aria," Jack moans

"We probably shouldn't."

"PM her."

"She said to just come to see her. Let's go through one at a time."  
"Hide in plain sight?" Jack asks.

"I'd hardly call what you're doing hiding," Shepard scoffs, fixing her hair into a low ponytail.

Jack shrugs the fur off her shoulder. "Whatever."

"So one at a time, then." Jack agrees, nodding her shiny bald head. The pair stumble down a few streets, making quick work of navigation by following the almost bodily thrumming of the base beating like a heart at the center of Omega. Shepard slips into afterlife like a nobody in plainclothes and Jack right behind her. It's nights where she can climb into the less bulky body-compressive light armors in her repertoire where she often feels the biggest rush. As a soldier, Shepard has become accustomed to the fast-paced heat-sink mass-effect real-death reaper-crisis megabattles for some time. The armor she is currently sporting was designed for espionage and not direct combat, using tiny pulses of mass effect fields that could be amplified by a companion who's a powerful enough biotic. She and Jack had become quite the ragtag wild-west team in their spare time

"Afterlife," the two split the word out, their guts vibrating with the bassline. Shepard dips away and moves through the crowd completely aloof; she had always valued her anonimity and wore her full-helmet armor at all times whilst on official spectre business, so there was no way she could be spotted now. Without N7 Markings and a trailing squad of misfits, she is a human nobody in an Earth Baseball League ball cap.

It's strange, people didn't even look at her and bumped into her quite a few times. Shepard is over six feet tall but even with size on her side she is nothing height-wise when standing beside a Krogan, Turian, or even the odd Vorcha. She had always loved being tall as a human on Earth; on Omega she loved being small just the same. She has to bribe the bouncer to get in, which is an absolute riot and Shepard has to stifle a laugh.

When she gets into Afterlife she squeezes to the bar, music kicking up a wild air in the crowd as they sway and girate to the music. The dancers wriggle in a group like a great amoeba, writhing in ecstasy as they all move through the same pulsing beats and rifs. What an energy. She senses the body heat of other patrons and is titillated by the closeness of it all.

Shepard makes her way to Aria eventually after swimming through a crowd of excitable and wriggling bodies, a guard approaching her when he can't get a scan on her Omni-tool to demand I.D. Shepard refuses and peeks over his shoulder, spotting Aria sipping on a large glass of ice water and sharpening a knife.

"Hey, Aria!" She shouts, the guard looks shocked and seems like he is going to push and even hit Shepard, which she will eat if she has to. Luckily enough the Asari sits up and turns her face toward Shepard like a great hawk. Fierce eyes dialing in on a voice she knows well.

"Calamity, is that you?" the Asari bemuses with a smile. "Isn't someone here in big trouble?" Shepard pushes past the guard and sits next to Aria, sighing dreamily. "You lookin' to run from your time, baby?"

"No," Shepard admits with reluctance. "I get locked up tomorrow."

"Aw, you spent your last night of freedom here with us?" Aria hums, gesturing vaguely at the crowd dancing all around them.

"Nah baby, just with you," Shepard makes a kissing sound.

Aria's voice deadpans. "How flattering." She pushes a hand across her scalp and purses her lips. "Where's Jack? The birds are saying you boarded together, did you not?"

"Behind me," Shepard shrugs with a vague calm.

"What can I do for you, Shepard?" Aria asks, pushing a hair out of Shepard's face with an almost fraternal tenderness.

"Aria nobody's listening to me."  
"About the Reapers?"

Shepard shudders. "About the Reapers."

"I'm afraid they never will until it's too late."

"So now I'm going to Prison."

"So it goes."

Shepard sighs and there is a shuffling behind them, Jack having pushed two guards aside and shouldered her way into the private suite with quite a ruckus. "Hi babes."

"Subtle," Aria chides, holding up a hand of calm to abide fuming muscle.

"Not happy to see me, Aria?" Jack smiles, bowing and kissing the Asari on her lithe purple fingers.

"Never," she chuckles, Jack joining them on the couch.

"As thrilling as this visit is, should you two really be here right now?"

Shepard harumphs, "Probably not."

"You'd better go, Miss Thing. Too many people around here wanna see you dead and I don't want that fight to happen in my club."

"Aria," Jack wines, kissing the fingers again.

"Giddyup."

"Bye, Aria,"

"Bye, girls."

They're escorted out a back exit by one of Aria's guards and the music still makes their ribs quiver through heavy doors.

"Well that was a bust," Shepard sighs, hocking a ball of snot onto the ground and rifling her pockets for a lighter.

"Not so fast, mama," Jack snickers. She pulls a long tapered bottle of liquor from under her coat and Shepard wheezes.

"Johnny coming up big with the free booze!"

"Aria won't miss it," she chuckles, turning over the label.

"What'd ya get?" Shepard peeks over her friend's arm, huge coat obscuring her view.

"Oh shit," Jack laughs with a groan. "This is Drossix."

"Pffff fuck."

"I know a place that will trade us something for this, though," Jack contends, pulling out a spliff from the front pocket of her jacket. "In the meantime, I got this bad boy."

"Ayyy," Shepard quickly abandons the unlit cigarette for something stronger and lights the spliff with little moment for pause. "Let's go," she croaks around a chestful of smoke.

"Aight, c'mon, it's this way."

Jack leads the way, the boozed up spectre trailing behind like a tutting little ship, knocking into the occasional pedestrian or pile of scrap. On their walk they pass an old poster pasted to a wall that reads "Hero of Omega, Conciliate Angel, Savior of the Pestilent. Gods bless the Shepard." It's been ripped and defaced, but Christ it feels good to know people loved her once.

Jack throws an arm over her friend's shoulder, taking a long drag from the spliff and passing it back with a smoky sigh. "Listen, Oakley, I'm sure you won't be grounded long. When the Reapers _do_ come, they're gunna need you anyway."

Shepard agrees with a hum of malice, complying to Jack's pulling her away from the poster as they round another corner in the slums.

"Check it," Jack grins, digging Shepard in the ribs when they arrive at their destination.

"Goddesses? Is this a girl bar?"

"More like girl-centric, don't worry I know a bartender here that will hook us up for this, trust me."

The pair ascend a set of stairs and Jack shmoozes with a bouncer for a minute before heading in, waving Shepard in behind her. Jack is a towering statuesque beauty in the strobing lights of the nightclub, and Shepard pushes through crowds of women and femmes of all species to follow her. Gender has a funny way of mixing cross-culturally, and everyone in the building is so queer it's hard to tell who comes from where and what planet and how, it's just dancing and kissing and sweating.

They're able to get to the bar in no time, and Jack is greeted by a turian with a kiss on the cheek. Shepard can't hear anything but watches as the two talk and Jack holds up the bottle of Drossix Blue to her compatriot. They exchange words and the turian bends down to pull up two handles of something Shepard can't recognize to give to Jack, who immediately winks and hands one off to the commander. She takes a swig. Tequila.

Jack grins at her and the two clink bottles, making their way to the dance floor.

Anne Caroll Shepard can hit a fly's wings off it's body with a single heat sink at 100 yards looking backwards through a hand mirror. The girl can run a 6 minute mile and make quick work of any target range with any firearm. She can hack safes and deactivate bombs and spring her best-friend-to-be out of intergalactic torture prison… however, Anne Caroll Shepard cannot dance.

Not for a lack of movement, because she has the movement, she just has no grace or sense of rhythm, it's all just feeling. Liara would play nice and say that it was more like art, that many Asari would see it as a deeply emotional method of sapien expression without the abstract limitations of what's considered "dance." Joker would very quickly burst that bubble and say Shepard looked like a fish.

Regardless, she and Jack were moshing in a huge group of women, clinking their handles of tequila and occasionally sharing with anyone who asked, waterfalling the alcohol into their open mouths.

The two of them found some quiet in the restroom amongst various persons correcting their makeup, passing the remaining handle back and forth.

"I wanna get in a fight," Shepard seeths, touching a fat lip from being knocked into out in the crowd.

"I thought you said you wanted to fuck?"

"I want both, John. I wanna fight _and_ fuck. Is that too much to ask?"

Jack lays a hand on her friend's shoulder. "I don't believe that it is, Oak."

"Didn't think so."

"Let's not do it here, though."

"Nah let's go somewhere more… fighty."

"Let's."

They leave Goddesses in even worse shape than before, using the other as full on support and swaying with every step. They go back and forth as they pass bar after bar, eventually settling on one that seemed the most like it was looking for a ruckus.

The inside is generally occupied by men, some working class and others looked like they were gang members.

"Oh, _perfect,_" Shepard slurs, her and Jack sauntering in with little regard for their reception into the space. Shepard's hair is curly and wild, having long abandoned the cap that's now secured around a belt loop at her hip, and Jack has never quite blended. The two make for quite a pair, and Shepard can feel eyeballs on them as she takes a seat while Jack fetches them draft beers and two waters each from the bar.

"I'm feeling this," Shepard sighs. It's a nice change of pace from Goddesses, who's siren song has long left a ringing in her ears. The space is divided into two sides, one being for seated guests and the other for standing/darts. The standing guests are in small circles of other men leaning around high tops; there's about twelve of them and a couple are definitely eclipse members. The other side of the room is just Shepard and Jack, a young couple kissing and quietly groping each other in a back corner, a handful of small tables plus a poker game of four guys. A small monitor plays Omega Access News, the only official news station on Omega. The monitor is on mute but it plays with a soft glow in the upper corner of the bar, only slightly obscured with a single bar of static on the upper third of the screen.

"Sizing them up, Annie?" Jack sips her water. Shepard answers with a hum over the foam of her beer, taking a long sip.

"In more ways than one, Jackie."

"So have you made a choice? Fuck or Fight?"

"We don't have time for both?"

"I dunno, Shep, it's like 2AM Seattle Time."

"Christ."

"I had a girl in my first all biotics gang that was into all the Christ, like actually, and would always get so upset when she'd take his name in vain."

"She Earthborn?"

"American-Earthborn."

"Oh, boy."

"You Earthborns are so weird. Like - colonists I can handle because it's all just space talk but Earthborns are always saying some crazy shit. Like - I once heard the engineer with the accent say something was 'gammie' … what even is that?"

"Kenneth Donnelly," Shepard nods with an almost dreamy sigh. "It means like fucked up or bad, like broken."

"Aw, man, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to get you thinkin'bout the crew."

"It's fine if I think of something else quickly I can still repress the feelings until tomorrow."

"Uh, okay, Oakley," Jack coughs quietly, gesturing toward the bar's little news monitor with a subtle turn of her head..

No sound came from it but in large red letters the headline read "COMMANDER SHEPARD REPORTEDLY SPOTTED ON OMEGA"

The blood drains from Shepard's face. She'd counted three Batarians in there when she'd scanned the room and they all seemed occupied like normal patrons. Nobody made a fuss, nobody gestured toward her or looked her way since they'd first entered; she knew the more discreet she tried to seem the more attention she would get so she calmly turned to Jack.

"You feel threatened here?"

Jack snorts "no ma'am." Shepard raised her mug of beer. "To prison."

"Here, here."

Their glasses clink again and they sit quietly at their seats without a word, decompressing in the room's stagnant heat.

The steady bubbling of an argument grows louder behind them, and eventually the screeching of chairs gives way to full on shouting.

Shepard listened as one guy called the other guy, who is huge, indoctrinated and a xenophobe. The big guy fires back that the other is ignorant and brainwashed. They shout like this until one swung at the other over the card table with exclamations of cheer from those in the standing section.

It seems a normal poker's brawl until she catches wind of a few familiar terms: most notably her own name and rank. Then it becomes very clear about what - or whom - they're arguing. The term "Shepard Lover" is thrown out and she nearly chokes on her drink, Jack pats her back, equally as involved in spectating the squabble while her friend coughs around a mouthful of beer.

More punches are thrown and eventually more patrons become involved, one coming crashing across their table with a grimace and the two women rise from their seats freshly doused in booze.

A man knocks into Shepard and she uses both hands to throw him to the ground, another shouts at them from across the bar. She and Jack make eye contact and grin. "And you said we wouldn't have time," Shepard laughs, the two squaring off back to back.

Spectre or no a drunken brawl is a drunken brawl, and she and Jack both sustain a few hits while knocking folks out and getting screamed at by the bartender. They're not on any particular side, just dodging thrown beer bottles and knuckly paws of any swinging fellow trying to land a hit. It's a whirlwind of commotion and is over almost as quickly as it started. Shepard has broken two noses and knocked another patron out cold, bouncing idly on her feet as she prepares for more but is quickly thrown out onto the street via a side door. She trips and knocks into the opposite wall, catching herself before she can land face-first into the side of a dumpster. "Fuck." She huffs, pushing a palm across her bleeding nose. She hears someone else moving beside her in the alley and rears to face them, a great hulking person blocking the streetlight like a mast of ship.

"So, you a Shepard lover, too?" It is one of the bar attendees who was playing in poker and part of the original skirmish that started the whole brawl off.

"You could say that," Shepard huffs, coughing out a wad of phlegm and some blood. She straightens and reaches for her sunglasses but realizes she must have lost them in the fight, sighing and grabbing the bridge of her nose where the bone is and jostling lightly. Not broken.

"Damn, you can really take a hit," he observes, stepping away from the wall of the alleyway and moving a bit closer to her. Shepard snorts, pushing her hair off her neck and unlatching her ball cap from her hip.

"I sure can," she laughs, finally raising her head to look at him.

He's a big human man, broad chest, thick neck, scarred face, biceps like a fucking python. It's been a long time since she's seen such a specamine, not since basic training; as if cursing herself she notices the Alliance dog tags hanging around his neck. "Oh wow, you're a marine," she observes out loud, her own tags practically burning a hole through her jacket.

"Yes ma'am," He nods, taking up more space than he should in the albeit tiny side alley, the length of his shoulders practically reaching from wall to wall between buildings.

"You're a big boy, even for a marine," she hiccups. Less flirting and more just making observations aloud, inhibitions lifted by a heavy veil of booze, but even still she feels a blush rise to her face as the words leave her mouth. So forward, even for her.

"Yes ma'am," he laughs again. "And what are you?"

"Oh, just a ne'er do well on Omega, trying to make the best of a bullshit situation," she sighs, wiping a sheen of sweat off her forehead.

"Oakley!" Jack comes stumbling out of the bar sporting what looks like a broken finger and now stands at the mouth of the alleryway over her new friend's shoulder. Taking quick note of the two of them she cocks a brow. "You good?"

"I'm good, John."

"Going for the hat trick, hey, Boss?"

"Something like that."

"Just call if you need me." Jack laughs, bowing away and quietly muttering something about finding some downers.

"Save some for me, Jackie."

"Will do."

Her friend slinks away like a jungle cat, teetering on high heels and radiating with powerful biotic energy to keep herself upright as she makes her way back to the port where the Normandy II is docked.

"Your friend?" The large marine asks.

"My best friend," Shepard huffs, swiveling her attention back towards him. "You need a friend?"

He hitches a breath and laughs in a way that Shepard can only describe as nervous. "You gonna be my friend, Lola?"

"Lola?"

"Yeah."

"That's my name, huh?"

"You seem like one."

"Hm," Shepard muses. "And what's your name?"

"Jimmy Vega."

"Well, Jimmy Vega. You've happened to catch me on a very gracious evening where I will allow gratuitous flirting, nicknames included," Shepard presses a hand to the center of his chest between his pectorals. "Wow. You're really huge." He's so firm.

"Yeah I mean, I work out like every-"

"Sh."

"Yes ma'am."

She looks up from his chest to his face and feels a shiver go through her. He's actually very cute. "You mind if I feel up on you, Lieutenant?" She reads his rank from his tags.

"No, ma'am," he smiles. She is so drunk her filter has basically been completely shut off at this point, and inhibition is a sober man's game. Commander Shepard can't afford to care at the moment. She laughs wrily at herself and her behavior, the far-away sober forever kind of mind that watches your drunk self from a distance and just goes "oh, boy." Truly though, it is a chore. He looks like he might be soft through the middle, in the big-fucking-boy kind of way. She feels a flutter of Marine crushes and liaisons she had in the academy, a distant nostalgia that warms the biotic cyborg cockles of her rotted twice-beating heart.

She hums, pushing up the bottom hem of his shirt and pushing a thumb through his happy trail. "You're a big man," she gushes. "Oh my god." His body is moist with sweat and warm, he smells like someone spilled a whiskey on him. A trail of dark hair leads from his belly button to his pants and Shepard licks her lips, exposing his upper torso and sighing dreamily, quite pleased with the situation she's found herself in. "Oh my," She gasps, saddling her hips up to his and ravaging him with her eyes.

Shepard found a deep and profound beauty in all living things she had come to know in her great adventures, as a kid on Earth, as a grunt, as an N7 marine, as a spectre, in her friends and enemies alike, all species she knew of, she admired. Somewhere a smoldering passion for life allowed her to intake all the things around her and accept them with a deep seeded sort of grace. It was the human male form however that unlocks a dirty mammalian place in her.

She feels guilt at her secret, her identity. She looks at him again and sighs softly with want, leaning over and pressing her lips to the center of his breastbone. Gooseflesh rises on his skin and he shivers, she breathes in the response like a mouthful of water. How delicious.

She fills her palms with handfuls of Jimmy Vega's deltoids, feeling up on his thick midsection and a part of her wants to take a big bite out of him.

The alleyway is anything but a romantic setting but then again, Omega is hardly a place for romance, and Shepard feels herself get lustfully carried away. She is past the point of being able to stop herself, and her guilt is part of the fantasy by now.

"Well, I have to go," she hears herself say.

"The shuttle I'm stationed on is docked here for a whole night, you can't stay?"

Shepard sighs with a genuine air of sadness, imagining only for a moment what it would be like to get railed for a couple hours by the sexiest human man she's ever seen. She looks at her watch and bites the inside of her cheek. She has to be on her way to the citadel in two and a half hours. "I'm afraid not," she hiccups, patting him on the shoulder.

"Well, here, let me give you my number," Jimmy Vega hurriedly scribbles down his digits on a scrap of paper and hands it to Shepard, who balls it up and shoves it in her jacket pocket.

"See you around, Jimmy Vega." It's less of a lie than she thinks it is.


	4. all coming back

EDIT: sorry for the original formatting issues. Enjoy!

"Commander Shepard," Jimmy Vega says again, clears his throat as a blush clearly fills his face and becomes the picture of professional (if mortified) as he salutes his superior officer. Shepard can feel the heat in her own ears, drawing a breath of composure and straightening.

"Lieutenant," She bursts with a bout of manic snickering. The absolute cruel hilarity of this entire day has her deflated but decidedly stone cold.

...

"Can I walk to your quarters?" He gasps, tripping over himself following her. He presses a finger to one nostril and uses the other to shoot a small stream of blood onto the ground.

"You can't visit my quarters," Shepars lilts, hoping if she turns every corner just quickly enough she can find Jack and keep herself from staying out too late.

A strong hand on her wrist, stopping her momentum with gentle ease and guiding her backward. She looks at the clasp of his hand which links them and pauses, stopping dead in a nearly-quiet Omega alley intersection. Someone down the way is sobbing.

...

"Lieutenant James Vega, at your service Commander."

...

"Lieutenant," She huffs, blushing. He's _so_ strong. She can't dissect why that makes her feel the way it does and she imagines his hands on her breastbone, pressing her into the carpet.

"Stay with me, Lola," he practically pleads. Her hair catches a gust of city wind, hot and chemical, swiping it around her face in a mass of bouncy coils "Just a little longer."

He draws her wrist gently to his mouth, presses it to him, kisses it, inhales.

"I…"

"Don't say that you have to go."

"Don't keep asking..." Shepard whispers. His body is so warm and clearly solid all the way through, she sighs.

...

"James."

"Commander. It's uh-"

"Lieutenant," Shepard agrees, saying the word is a pause.

It goes on a while.

...

"Lola…" he smiles, it is mischievous and dimpled. He seems charmed by her drunkenness, it is clumsy and sweet, and Shepard feels a rare sense of stability around him, like standing on land after years at sea.

"May I kiss you, Lieutenant?"

"Yes, please, you may."

The commander kisses him on the neck. She feels a pang of guilt again, knowing he will no doubt see her on TV the next day. If he's like any other marine he'll either tell all of his friends or nobody at all, and who in the alliance hasn't had, or at least known of, a wild secret fraternization hookup?

His body is so warm and he hums against her kiss. It is timid and aflutter with girlish nerves.

How rare and very tantalizing. She lets herself feel safe with her body next to his, like she can let her guard down for a moment.

...

There's a gust of an air conditioned breeze that flutters down her back as she stands at the pressurized doorway. Vega is maybe three feet from her but it feels like a chasm. She has no idea what to say.

"It really is an honor, Commander, truly."

"Right."

"I... had no idea."

"I know."

Another stretch of quiet.

...

"Let me kiss you," he pleads, their bodies coming closer.

"Okay," Shepard gasps, there is a small beat as if he were giving her pause to rescind the invitation, and he tilts her chin, kissing her softly on the corner of the mouth. He kisses her throat, behind her ear at the nape, her cheekbone and temple. His mouth is so soft and hot, leaving a languid gestalt of lovenips along her exposed skin.

...

"Listen, Commander, I can have someone else do this."

"Vega, you do whatever makes you most comfortable."  
"Of course, Commander."

"Are you?"

"What's that, Ma'am?"

"Comfortable."

"Oh, uh-"

"Are you comfortable with this…" She makes a vague gesture. "Set up?"

"Well- I can be if you are, ma'am."

"I'm fine," Shepard replies with almost too-cool an authority.

"Cool, that's uh- great, then so am I."

"Great."

...

He comes dangerously close to uncovering the chain to her dog tags and she reclines away from him with a sway, he steadies her with one hand.

Shepard has been a heavy broad all her life, a thick, built, tough-body soldier with an attitude for winning and the genes to bridge the gap, a winner. She is tall, she is strong, and a rigorous workout schedule and finely tuned diet ensure she pushes 200 pounds at all times. Jimmy vega palms the swell of her hip in a broad open hand with relative ease, his other hand wrapping across her thigh and under a handful of her ass.

...

"So am I not expecting jail time?"

"Not sure, ma'am, but technically you're still not out of the woods."

"Pardon?"

He shuffles awkwardly, smiling in a way that Shepard knows he's laughing at what's happening too. He's so handsome, like a cowboy in an old western movie. Dimples and stubble and beautiful brown eyes. She bites the inside of her lip and holds her poker face.

"Ma'am, if you'll just follow me we can start to sort things out as we go."

Shepard feels another wave of nausea as she takes the first step toward Jimmy Vega. "Please, no need to call me ma'am."

"Uh - what should I be calling you then, Commander?" They are shoulder to shoulder now, walking down a long hallway with Shepard trailing slightly, exhausted but too proud to slouch.

"Just Shepard is fine."

"Shepard."

"Or Annie." Shepard doesn't know what makes her say this, she never lets people call her by her first name, and feels a rush of adrenaline from revealing her card so soon. It feels like a betrayal to those she guarded it from for so long.

"Annie," He says her name like it's a secret.

...

"Jimmy-" Shepard gasps. He picks her up off her feet and hoists her up so her knees can wrap around his incredibly thick midsection. There is a joyful spark of delight, a decadent permission of self to feel weightless and all the while all-consuming. Powerful, lustful, carnate. A woman. He bodies her weight above his hips and snickers, easily compensating his posture to balance.

Shepard has been so disconnected with her sex these past few months. She and Garrus were together for a short time but it was so close and intimate and… important. Everything about Garrus still sparked a pang of want and loneliness inside her chest, all the alien and wonderfully strange things about him had for a long time filled her heart and made her damn emotional. It was love, she knew. There were moments of carnal interest and physicality, but mostly it was just love; a profound respect and care for one another that could supersede any errant cultural or chemical difference. She loved Garrus so much it made her chest feel sore.

The Lieutenant was sex in the very most human way. He could support her back with one hand and her hips with the other, the two of them wrap up in one another and kissing as if it were going out of style. Soft sweet pressing mouths and lips and tongues and breaths and gasps and, by god, the thrill.

Male Marines will forever hold a special place in Shepard's heart: the part of her that swoons and sighs and wants to be loftily bench pressed or thrown over a shoulder like a delicate accessory of bodily acclaim. The part that wants to be ravaged. She had suppressed it for such a long time that now, facing the immediacy of her life behind bars starting tomorrow, holding onto that guarded feeling didn't matter. Funny how walls fall down.

...

The pair of Marines make their way down a short hallway; the Seattle Alliance Base Detention Center is heated to a warmth comfortable to any human, and the air is slightly damp as humidifiers buzz quietly in the walls. "Isn't Augusta in Oregon?" Shepard sniffs. She takes a deep O2 Oxygen Earth breath.  
"Yes, it is, you're spending some time here in a detention cell, l and then you and I get shipped back to Oregon in a couple hours."

"Shipped." She pauses.

"-Yes,"

"Oregon?"

"Yes."

"You live there?"  
"No, M-uh, in California, but close enough that the commute is quick."

"Oh. Well… that's nice."

"Anyway, just step into this little office over here so I can brief you a little more formally."

"Sure."

Shepard walks into the small office and sighs. Earthling offices are so human, in all their simplicity and delights. She feels a warmth in her chest at her return home, the mundane now appearing so extraordinary that she gets emotional upon spotting a yellow and red stress doll on the nearby desk.

"How long since you've been on civilian Earth?" James inquires, stepping neatly into the office behind her and shutting the door. Shepard feels a shiver run up the back of her neck.

...

"You're quite a sight," Jimmy Vega regards her like a ripe fruit.

...

Shepard woofs at the question, taking a seat in the neat little chair sitting in the center of the room. Four legs and all. The office is at ground level and sits beside a central garden sporting tall grassy reeds and a small water feature. The foliage provides a moody privacy for all the offices and the muffled sounds of rushing plants gives Shepard a small thrill.

Neatly decorated, James rounds Shepard to the other chair, scooting it forward and opening a briefcase containing several folders.

"Like twenty plus years."

"Wow."

"Yeah."

...

"Can we go somewhere?" Jimmy Vega asks, panting as he breaks away from Shepard's mouth.

Shepard pushes a handful of curls out of her face. "Go?" A bout of nervous energy sturs in her belly, she nearly bolts, her heart races.

"Well, not that the alleyway isn't nice," he laughs awkwardly, stacking her hips steady over his and bracing her with two huge hands.

"Oh, uh, sure, yeah. We could find a discotec," Shepard suggests.

"Can you dance?"

"Not really. I can writhe, though."

A laugh bubbles up from Jimmy Vega and he smiles a crooked helf-grin. One dimple presses into his cheek. "Sure, we can figure out a place to writhe. What about Afterlife?"

Shepard shrugs. "I'm not really welcome in that crowd."

"Too many fights there, Killer?"

Shepard nearly lets a squeal erupt out of her like a stuck pig. She's caught. "Something like that," she replies cooly instead.

"I know another place."

"Let's go."

"Alright."

...

"Are you worried about adjusting?"

Shepard is stumped and meets his eyes, brows pinching above her nose as she scowls. "No."

"The Alliance wanted you to have everything in front of you for you to read," James explains as he cooly brushes past whatever nerve he's just struck, heaving out three large folders from a briefcase and placing them before Shepard.

"Paper!" She smiles, opening the first folder.

"Commander Shepard, wait-"

**CONDITIONS FOR OMNI-TOOL DEINSTALLATION**

**CASE G37-FK7-5H39489**

**EARTH ALLIANCE NAVY LIEUTENANT COMMANDER ANNE CAROLL SHEPARD**

"Woah," Shepard croaks.

"Commander Shepard," he begins again. "In that folder are the conditions for the deinstallation and disassembly of your omni-tool."

"I see that."

"You're going to undergo a minor medical procedure, the data from the omni-tool, including anything encrypted or locally archived, will be destroyed. You can watch the physical memory card and encryption cache get melted down if you insist."

"I insist. Next."

"Everything you need to know is enclosed in your dossier, but basically as far as communication you will not have access to an omni-tool or any unsupervised networks of any kind. All transcommunication will be henceforth handled by the Alliance and on Alliance property."

"What about telecommunication?"

James pauses. "You'll have a pretty standard issue cellular phone."

She sucks on the inside of her lip. "How retro."

"You can include anyone on a list of telecommunications contacts and anyone can be added at any time. The Alliance will have to check off with the number before you can actually place calls but it will basically be like a directory of people you know. And they can choose not to accept access to the number, just so you know."

"Yeah, yeah. What else?"

"In the other two folders are your parole information and your requirements for standards of living when you move in at Augusta."

"So like a Neighborhood Handbook?"  
"Sort of, yeah. What you'll be expected to maintain on the grounds, privacy laws, etc. You can go over that in your own time, I'd really like to go over the conditions of your parole, ma'am. If that's alright with you."

"Please, enough ma'am's." Shepard replies curtly over the coffee table.

"Sorry. Annie."

She blushes again.

...

Shepard tails Jimmy Vega down multiple labyrinthian alleyways, following him almost professionally close. She has little clue where she is at this point. Only so many nights at Omega, a constantly changing amoeba of a city, can give you an idea of where one truly is, Shepard has doubled back more than a few times running errands around the cursed rock. Jimmy has a clue, though, and she is shocked when they turn and duck into a hole in the wall that they were not headed for a club. The air is spicy and fragrant and makes Shepard's eyes water.

"Oh, what is _that?_" Shepard asks, hiccuping and glancing at Jimmy, beholding him as if he had two heads. "Are you about to feed me, Lieutenant Vega?"

He raises his eyebrows at her and smiles. The space was hot and tiny, the walls crafted from what looked like compacted junk metal, stacked in meter-high cubes five tall, four wide, and eight deep.

Two narrow flutes of ventilation suck hot air out of the space each time the heavy curtain rolls open, and Shepard is suddenly very aware of just how warm it is. She clutches her jacket.

Jimmy Vega is already unzipping his: standard issue Alliance Marines stuff, inconspicuous, ready-made. She feels her mouth water when he pulls the zipper downand exposes a steaming sweaty bosom of curly chest hairs and male musk, beneath he is scantily clad in nothing but a white tanktop tucked neatly into belted Marine issued cargos. His chest is tan and broad and wide and Shepard sighs.

There are ten total seats in the space, three squatty stools clumped on either side of a small walkway to four chairs you step down into to be seated at a frothing flaming countertop where Shepard can feel hot damp air climb up from the slightly tented kitchen. Shepard steps down and slides comfortably into the double bench, Jimmy Vega sliding into the spot next to her.

...

Shepard clears her throat. "Parole, then."  
"Parole, then."

He pushes the maroon folder toward her and she opens it with exasperation. She can already tell by looking that it is many pages longer than she'd like it to be.

**CONDITIONS FOR PLANETARY ARREST & PAROLE**

**CASE G37-FK7-5H39489**

**EARTH ALLIANCE NAVY LIEUTENANT COMMANDER ANNE CAROLL SHEPARD**

"Jeez." Shepard huffs. "I'm not reading all of this." She is practically pouting, folding her arms across her chest and rolling her eyes.

"I can break it down pretty easily." James begins counting off on his fingers, starting with the ring finger, which Shepard found peculiar. "One, you can't leave Earth."

"So literally grounded."

"Yes."  
"Alright."  
"Two, you will continue to be an enlisted officer and hold your rank; Three, you've hereby been stripped of all duty and authority of that rank. Four-"

"Wait, stripped of authority within my rank? What?"

"So you're not being discharged but -"

"Essentially I'm being put to pasture."  
"I was going to say semi-retired."

"The USS Iowa."

"That's… actually very funny," James admits with pause.

Shepard mumbles a thank you and presses the backs of her knuckles to her mouth. Stupid sexy Vega. He sighs, "Listen. I believe in what you do and what you have been doing. I believe in your cause and I believe that you are right about the Reapers but… Commander... Annie… whether it was your fault or not in the eyes of the Intergalactic public, you committed war crimes. Your actions killed an entire planet of people. By that standard this-" he gestures to the papers. "Is getting off easy."

Shepard holds her face in her hands. "Continue."

...

"I hope you're hungry," James laughs.

"I could eat," Shepard agrees with forced hesitation, looking into the kitchen behind the counter. "What are we eating?"

"It's mostly Earth food but they have some Colony dishes that are unreal," Jimmy Vega waves and speaks Earthborn Spanish to one of the cooks. "Hey, stay a while," he smiles, flicking her coat's zipper.

"Uh, I'm comfortable, thank you."

They order a smorgasbord of food. Two large bowls of noodles, spicy bean buns, empanadas, curried chickpeas with actual avocado, fried salt-cured plums, and two hard boiled eggs each with a bowl of hot and spiced nuts.  
Shepard has never eaten so well. Jimmy Vega applauds her appetite with gusto, laughing and patting her on the back. It is such a simian gesture of affection that it warms her. Shepard's heart swells and she feels a cloud of butterflies form in her chest.

They joke and tease and prod, throwing back a couple beers each and casually exchanging sneaky glances and flirtatious pokes and prods while they play Happy Couple for a while.

Shepard is in a daze of delicious treats and gestures of intimacy, at one point Jimmy Vega reaches over to hold her hair back while she slurps noodles out of a steaming bowl of broth. She giggles around her mouthful and their shoulders brush against each other. What a treat it would be for life to be so simple.

Eventually the fantasy of her handsome charming boyfriend comes to an end, and Shepard realizes she must return to the Normandy as quickly as she can.

She waits for Jimmy Vega to get up, pays for the meal with Alliance credits, and shoves off without a word. When he returns she is already gone, drunk, stuffed, and high-tailing it back to her ship. She cries the entire way.

...

"You have to check in with the Alliance every month; As far as the rest of the Alliance is concerned you're still Commander Shepard, it's just going to be on paper that you're semi-retired, so you have base-level access to most Alliance stations. The rest of the stuff is sort of nitty-gritty and I do suggest you take the time to read it all."

"So do I have parole check-ins?"

"Yes. Sort of. Normally I would commute to Augusta every few days but-"

"But? Wait- you... every few days?""

"Essentially I will be on top-" they both stiffen, what verbage. Jimmy Vega's mouth seems suddenly dry and he coughs "- of you for the first week, then the check-ins become bi-weekly with random checks at any point in time."

"The first week?"

"Yes, Shepard. After you get settled in Augusta I'm to observe you for a week at a time, make sure you're getting comfortable in your new quarters, taking notes of your behavior and mental state, stuff like that."

"Alright. And you will be living with me?"

"Just for the first week."

"Okay."

There is a long silence as Shepard reads the top line of her parole conditions over and over again. The tall reeds outside the windows make shivering sounds as she absorbs everything, thanking Miranda Lawson for the new Good Math parts of her super-memory robot brain.

"There is still the procedure to get to."

"Ah, yes, the Omni-Tool. What exactly is to happen to it?" Shepard had, of course, demolished every bit of data before she even left Counsel Space, but feigned importance. She was, as some Earthlings would put it, 'taking the piss'.

"It will essentially be chemically eviscerated and a small part of the implant removed from your body. That will be incinerated at a high temperature. The ashes will be returned to you."

"Could I get them as a necklace?"

James stifles his laughter with a sharp breath and he squints at her, "I'm sure you could."

"Lead the way."

Shepard is left in a small cell with a cot and a chair, there is a single light, access to a bathroom, and dimmers for the windows. She holds the folders containing all of her parole information, standards of living, plus omni-tool deinstallation in her lap, yawning.

"So is a doctor performing the deinstallation, or what?"

James noticeably tenses as he prepares to give the answer. "Actually, I have been authorized to perform the procedure."

"Oh."

"It's pretty quick, minimally-invasive. We aren't doing too much hardware stuff." He picks up a suitcase Shepard can't remember if she'd seen already and opens it on the cot, revealing a frightening looking machine with a long and imposing needle, plus something that looks like an A/C jack attached to a thin screen.

"Minimally invasive, huh?" She snorts.

"Can't be worse than being shot, I'm sure." Jimmy Vega snickers as he screws two partf of the thing together.

"Have you done this before?"

"I practiced on myself a few times," he murmurs, running through several screens on the little viewfinder and saddles up behind her.

"Um"

"Pardon me, Commander," he says in a low soothing voice, pushing her hair aside and using his thumb to find the indent at the base of her skull. Her whole body swarms with heat and Shepard has to actively fight her physiological response. She can't help but recall his hands on her hips, his lips on her neck, her mouth on his stubbly jaw.

She feels a sharp pain and then a little zap behind her left eyeball. A cyborg neuron that's been buzzing in her head for 15+ years quiets with a small snap, like turning off a CRT television. She feels calmer… less scattered. "Alright." he hums to himself, satisfied. "Now for the memory banks, this part sucks a little more."

He rounds her and kneels. She can't tell if he can tell as he's bent over his little machine, but her head is swarming with images of the night prior, and her face fills with the warmth of a furious blush as he holds out his palm for her to place her wrist in. She obliges and a shaky breath exits her lungs. For a moment with her wrist in the wide expanse of his calloused hand she feels dainty and lithe.

He uses the long scary needle to slide into the muscle of her forearm to remove the implant there. It's about the size of a grain of rice and the machine latches on, removing the thing like a small robotic tumor.

"Alright," he says, withdrawing the apparatus and ejecting the tiny carton storing her omni-tool's memory bank. He shows it to her. "Would you care to verify?"

Shepard snaps out of her dreamy state and opens her hand for him to drop the canister into. Inspecting the serial number on the side and turning it over once more before returning it.

James pushes the container into the side of a little machine he pulled from the briefcase and she washes it swim in a vat of chemicals like a dead minnow before disintegrating and turning to mush.

"That's it?"

"That's it."

A pregnant silence stirs as he hands her the pod of liquid memory card; she shakes it like the world's worst snowglobe. Shepard glances up at Jimmy Vega to see he is still kneeling in front of her, his eyes quickly dashing to his feet before he rises from the floor, replacing the extractor and eviscerator into the suitcase and closing it. They are both quiet for a long time as he looms over her for what feels like several minutes.

"I will see you at 19:00, Comm… Shepard."

"Okay, Jimmy Vega."


End file.
